Part 4: Factors
Things happen behind the scenes
Keira steps in.
It seems Drake’s already waiting for her.
“You probably heard me talking to your mom.”
“Straightforward as always, Keira.” Drake gives a faint smile. “Yes, I did.”
“So?”
Drake fixes her with an analytical stare. “I think we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
An opposition threatens to spill from her lips, but she knows any further arguments for her case will only lead to deeper conflict.
“Yeah. Agreed.” Her focus switches to his table. “Any new developments on your…thing?”
Drake laughs. “It’s not a thing, Keira,” he walks over to the small device on the table. “I’ve got a name for it.”
“I hope it’s not one of those crazy names.”
He laughs again. “There you go again, always making fun of me.”
“What?” Keira stares at him incredulously. “I’m being serious. None of the names you gave your products before sounded good. What with…Bubble? Breadcrumbs? Like what the hell?”
“I’ve grown, Keira,” Drake shakes his head, amused. “This one’s called Nimbus.”
Keira whistles. “Impressive. Do you plan on adding any features?”
“I’ve actually thought of adding thought detection, as you suggested a few days back. But it does seem like a risk, so I’ve decided to drop it.”
She nods in approval. “Understandable. The human mind is unpredictable to say the least.”
“The transportation across dimensions still comes with a lot of risks as well. I don’t know if transporting to a drastically different place and/or time has effects on your health.”
“It actually does. The impacts on your health are only minimum if you transport somewhere that’s familiar, and not too far.”
“How far is not too far?”
“From 15 to 30 kilometers.”
“Not much of a distance, huh? How about any further?”
“From 31 to 60 kilometers, you’ll experience light nausea, and/or muscle pain. From 61 to 80 kilometers, the nausea worsens, and/or you’ll have to undergo cramps in multiple areas of your body. From 81 to 100 kilometers, your nervous system starts to break down. The best you get is a migraine, the worst you get is temporary amnesia, which might last for a week or two. Go any further than 100 kilometers, and you’re victim to all sorts of the most serious brain diseases, or even death.”
It takes a good three minutes for Drake to let all the new information sink in.
“How’d you know all this?”
“I’d already looked up research into travel like yours. They did experiment on this before, as you already know, and all that I just told you appeared in their papers.”
“Wow.”
She laughs. “It’s nothing.” Then her face darkens. “But people did die during this big experiment. It led to serious conflict throughout the country in 2293, and the topic had been forgotten ever since.”
“Whoa, Keira, how do you know so much?”
“It’s just supplementary knowledge. Hope it helped.”
“Sure did. You noted all that down, didn’t you, Nimbus?”
“Yes, Drake.” The device actually answers him the way a normal human would.
Keira raises a questioning eyebrow and gestures towards Nimbus.
“Yeah, AI talks.”
She shudders slightly. “Well, as long as it doesn’t do anything out of morale.”
“It won’t,” he scoffs.
She shoots him a look. “Hope it doesn’t.”
The man doesn’t need to look to know who just came in.
“What brings you here, Amelia?”
A soft chuckle.
“So I can’t be here?”
“Of course not,” he smiles, tucking his papers back into the binder, “you’re always welcome. What’s new?”
“Well, I found something that could be new, but I don’t know just yet. I’m still investigating.”
“Unsure until all evidence points to a concrete conclusion. As expected of you, Amelia. I trust you’ll be meticulous, so I won’t pursue your case any further. I can wait.”
The woman smiles. “Thank you for your trust, Alexander.”
“Just stating the facts. No need to thank me.”
“How is the preparation going?”
“Everything’s smooth for the time being. It won’t be long until the first prototypes are released.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“To be honest, I can’t wait to see the potential of AI.”
“Don’t we all?”
“True.” He stands to leave. “I expect you to take care of all other matters while I’m busy with setting up the milestone event.”
She follows suit, coming up close behind him to put a hand on his back. “Don’t worry about that.”
“I know I won’t have to — ”
He collapses to the floor with a dull thud, his sentence unfinished.
Amelia stares at the corpse on the floor, emotionless.
She destroys the cameras by simply interfering with the electromagnetic signals, then clears all evidence pointing to her existence in the room with a cleansing scan.
“It’s been too long.”
A subtle robotic edge gleams in her eyes as she marches out the door without a single backwards glance.
